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Plan to Keep Israeli Arabs Off Some Land Is Backed

A cabinet vote endorsing a bill that would bar Israeli Arabs from buying homes in Jewish communities built on state land caused an uproar here today, with critics in and outside the government calling it racist.

On Sunday the cabinet voted, 17 to 2 with one abstention, to support the bill submitted by Rabbi Haim Druckman, a lawmaker from the rightist National Religious Party.

The bill, which would amend an existing law, says that state land allocated to build communities in Israel will be ''for Jewish settlement only.''

More than 90 percent of the land in Israel is state owned or controlled; home purchases on such land are in effect long-term leases. The bill seeks to entrench this mechanism, which was designed to keep land in Jewish hands.

Yet the cabinet's vote of support sharpened the debate here over whether Israel can be both Jewish and democratic, with equal rights for its million Arab citizens.

Cabinet members from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Likud joined religious and far-right ministers in voting for the bill, with the exception of Justice Minister Meir Sheetrit, who abstained. Mr. Sharon had left the cabinet meeting before the vote took place, as had all but one Labor minister, who voted against the bill. While a spokesman for Mr. Sharon said he supported the legislation in principle, Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, the Labor Party leader, accused the Likud ministers of stealing a vote behind the backs of the absent Labor ministers.

Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein, who attends cabinet meetings but is not a member, argued against the bill. In a statement released by his office, he said he had ''urged ministers not to adopt an unnecessary law that could further unravel the delicate threads bridging the divide between Jews and Arabs.''

The bill was designed to counter a March 2000 Israeli Supreme Court decision that there could be no discrimination between Jews and Arabs in allocating state lands.

The court decision was handed down in a case involving an Israeli Arab, Adel Kaadan, who was turned down when he applied to buy land to build a home in the Jewish village of Katzir in Galilee. Like many rural communities in Israel, Katzir was built by the quasigovernmental Jewish Agency, and Mr. Kaadan was rejected because he was an Arab.

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The court ruled that the state could not discriminate in allocating land, even if it was acting through the Jewish Agency, part of whose mission is to establish communities for Jews in Israel.

The bill seeks to invalidate the ruling by legislating that communities be built exclusively for Jews. An explanatory note attached to the bill asserts that the court decision undermines the Jewish Agency's mission to settle Jews in Israel -- that the court ''preferred the principle of equality of a state of all its citizens to its value as a Jewish state.''

The attachment also says giving preference to settling Jews is in keeping with a government policy ''that recognizes the need to Judaize various areas across the country.''

In a column today in the daily Maariv, Rabbi Druckman called the cabinet vote a ''victory for Zionism'' over a court decision that had ''created a dangerous precedent undermining Israel's very right to exist as the state of the Jewish people.''

Mr. Kaadan, on the other hand, said that sponsors of the bill sought to ''create a new apartheid,'' and that ministers supporting the legislation had forgotten Israel's declaration of independence, which promises equal rights to all citizens.

He recalled that he had wanted to move his family to Katzir because it had better schools and services than those available in his town, Baka al-Gharbiya. Israeli Arabs have long complained of discrimination in state budgeting decisions, which they say have hampered development of their communities, fomenting high levels of poverty and unemployment.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which filed the court petition on behalf of Mr. Kaadan, said ''the nature of democracy in Israel, as defined in the Israeli declaration of independence,'' was at stake.

Yossi Sarid, leader of the opposition Meretz Party, was more blunt. The government was ''turning Israel into a racist state,'' he said, ''perhaps the most racist in the family of democratic nations.''